Open Lab for Research Support: Policy

Assistance with finding and formatting digital numeric and spatial data

This service is a joint project of the University Library and Applied Technologies for Learning in the Arts and Sciences (ATLAS), and is available to everyone on campus. Services offered include: acquiring data sets needed for teaching and research; locating, downloading and preparing data for secondary analysis; and identifying and creating course materials and teaching tools (including customized data sets drawn from various data repositories).

Data Services’ open lab hours in Library 314

These research support hours offer researchers the opportunity to use specialized software tools such as SAS, SPSS, and ArcGIS in a supportive environment. New users of these tools are encouraged to attend training workshops offered by ATLAS (http://www.atlas.illinois.edu/services/stats/workshops/registration/) rather than seek introductory training during these consultation hours.

Priority assistance during open lab hours in Library 314 will be given to users in the following order:

Assistance with data preparation for scholarly research or coursework, using SAS, SPSS, ArcGIS, or other tools.

Assistance with data location for scholarly research or coursework.

Users with computing needs unrelated to data location or preparation will be directed to computers elsewhere in the Main Library.When others are waiting for assistance, consultations will be limited to 15 minutes at a time.